


The Crown's Burden

by LizHollow



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd Needs a Hug, Dimitri might have daddy issues, Zine: A King's Journey - An Unofficial Dimitri Zine (Fire Emblem), but you know what, he is a soft boi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:01:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28926225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizHollow/pseuds/LizHollow
Summary: Dimitri struggles with the weight of the crown and the toll it takes to carry, so he seeks counsel from the only man who might understand: his father.As seen in A King's Journey, the Dimitri Zine.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	The Crown's Burden

The arguing proved relentless.

Dimitri never expected this to be easy. Anything but. Yet all the same, he grew tired of hearing the indignant voices of the older men and women serving as his advisors: men and women who leaned into the prejudice perpetuated by the masses in the Kingdom following the regicidal incident no one dared mention around him.

Few understood his reasons for attempting to mend relations with Duscur, even after presenting evidence that the citizens of Duscur were the victims in the great tragedy, not villains deserving punishment. The advisors cited the brutish behavior of those survivors of Duscur as reason enough not to bother with them.

_ Them _ . How often Dimitri heard that word to describe the people of Duscur. A curse word, a declaration of two sides.

As the others spoke, the young king glanced over his shoulder where his greatest friend stood. The man of Duscur was anything but a villain. The fact that he stood stoic and silent during these meetings while others criticized his entire culture and people in his presence proved it.

Dimitri faced forward again and then stood, placing his hands down on the wooden table. The man speaking cut off.

“Your Majesty?”

“I understand this is not a popular decision, but Duscur is willing to negotiate reparations. Sitting here and speaking ill of them tells more about us than them,” Dimitri said. The men and women at the table lowered their gazes. “When next we reconvene, I want to hear productive plans about what we can offer them.”

The man opposite Dimitri, a member of a small but prominent noble family in the western Kingdom, cleared his throat. “With all due respect, Your Majesty,” he began, his voice quavering, “you are king of the people, not king of yourself. Few approve of this, nobles and peasantry alike.”

A year ago, Dimitri would have run the man through with Areadbhar for speaking like that. But Dimitri was not the man he was then. He swallowed the brutal thought that slithered into his mind and let his fingers curl against the tabletop. Even as voices whispered in his head, he managed to keep them at bay.

“And as king of the people, it is my job to bring out the best of this nation.” His voice remained steady but cool, slipping like ice from his lips. “To do this, we must put aside all our biases and prejudices and learn to cooperate with those who we see as different. Ignorance is no excuse when there is the opportunity to be informed. I will not budge on this point. If you believe that  _ this _ shows the best of our people, you are sorely mistaken and may dismiss yourself.”

The man stared at his folded hands. “No, Your Majesty.”

“Let us reconvene in two days’ time, after you have had time to consider what I have said,” Dimitri concluded, and the men and women murmured their reluctant agreement.

He knew what this crowd of men and women twice his age thought of him: a boy-king, perhaps half the man his father was. They were grateful to him for reuniting the Kingdom and ending the war with the Empire, surely, but no one could deny his inexperience, nor his softheartedness, which proved a trait unbecoming of a king.

Yet how many of them surrendered with their tails between their legs at the first sign of war with the Empire? He did not forget, even if he did forgive.

The point was moot. The room cleared by the next time he looked up. Instead, a bustling pair of servants scrubbed the table and pushed in all the chairs. Dedue approached Dimitri’s side and cleared his throat, and the king rubbed his cheek with a calloused hand.

“Your Majesty,” the man of Duscur started, “you are unwell.”

“Not unwell, just tired,” Dimitri clarified.

One of the servants, a young man perhaps only a few years his junior, bowed as Dimitri walked around the table towards the door. “Your Majesty. Supper will be ready shortly. Will you take it in your chamber or in the dining room?”

“The dining room, please.” Dimitri looked to Dedue. “Will you join me?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Pleasant evening, Your Majesty!” The female servant, who Dimitri believed to be the younger sister of the other servant, bowed.

The brother bowed again. “Yes, thank you, Your Majesty.”

_ Your Majesty _ . It was a title that took some getting used to, though it was perhaps more jarring when he heard his name now. But, oh, how he preferred to be called by name. That was one of his fondest memories of the Officers’ Academy… there, he was treated like an equal. Still, nostalgia for better, or simply different, days would not change things today.

Dimitri walked down the hall of the palace with Dedue at his heels. The dining room table was set for one when he entered, prepared no matter Dimitri’s answer to the servant; he would find a set of silver plates and utensils in his bedroom, too, if he preferred that.

“I will ask for another place setting,” Dimitri told Dedue.

“Your Majesty.” Dedue watched as Dimitri took his seat at the end of the table. “I will not need a place setting.”

“But Dedue.” Dimitri’s brow creased. “You said you would join me.”

“I will eat later. Do not concern yourself with me.”

Dimitri frowned, staring at his reflection in the polished silver plate. He had hoped that once he took the throne that Dedue would move beyond this formality. Yet he knew Dedue maintained it for Dimitri’s own good, especially during these negotiations with the nobility. Only once Duscur regained its position in the world would Dedue call Dimitri his friend. All the more reason to mend relations with haste.

The king ate in silence and solitude. Servants flitted about, refilling his goblet after each sip, tending to his every need. Never had he been so surrounded, so cared for, and so alone.

Dimitri could not bring himself to finish his meal. He rose, raising a hand to keep a concerned servant at bay. The young man bowed deep and backed away, eyes fixed on the floor.

“Shall we retrieve your horse, Your Majesty?” a servant by the door asked as Dimitri approached. “It is a lovely evening for a ride, if it pleases you.”

Dimitri shook his head with a small smile, and without another word, he left the dining room. He could hear Dedue’s heavy steps behind him as he strode down the hallway. Staff and servants bowed as he passed, pausing whatever they did no matter how inconvenient to make sure they paid their respects.

He stopped in front of a pair of doors carved from the finest wood in the Kingdom. He glanced back at Dedue with one hand lingering on the door handle. “Make sure I am given some privacy,” he said before disappearing into the room.

Little existed in this space. The tiled floors held nothing save for an ornate chair at the farthest end of the room, leaving the rest of the room empty and cold. The curtains covered the windows, not yet drawn, but the thin fabric let some semblance of daylight into the room. Dimitri approached each window and pulled the curtains to the sides, letting the setting sun burn freely into the room for the first time in weeks.

After drawing the last set of curtains, Dimitri walked to the opposite side of the room, stopping before a portrait taller than he. The man in the portrait could very well be his own reflection in several years’ time, save the obvious difference of both eyes and facial hair. But the blond hair, the jawline, the color of the eyes, even the nose: all reminiscent of the king who stood before the portrait.

Dimitri reached out a hand and touched his fingertips to the canvas. “Good evening, Father.”

It was said that time healed all wounds, but he feared the passing of time, as well. Because as the cycle of the moons continued, the memory of his loved ones faded like the setting of the sun. The voices of his deceased father and friends, once so clear, were merely variants of his own now.

Dimitri’s own voice returned the greeting in the back of his mind, and he curled his fingers into his palm, his knuckles now resting on the portrait.

“I wish more than ever that you were here,” Dimitri told his father, looking the portrait in the eyes as if that might will the man back to life.

“You know that’s not possible,” the voice in Dimitri’s mind responded. Maybe it sounded a little like his father, as close as his memory could get to recreating the voice of a man lost a decade ago. “What troubles you, my son?”

“I don’t know how to be king. I trained all my life for this role, and now that I am here, I question if I ever knew anything.” Dimitri stepped closer to the portrait still, his head level with the bottom of the painting. He pressed his forehead against the gilded frame and closed his eyes.

His father laughed, a booming sound that used to echo in this hall. “No one  _ knows _ how to be king.”

Dimitri lifted his head and glared up at his father’s face. “Then how am I supposed to rule? How do I become a good king?”

“The fact that you ask that question is a testament to your resolve.” The man in the portrait did not smile, but Dimitri could picture his father’s grin. “But you must first recognize that you will never please everyone. Your role as king is to preserve the Kingdom, to provide for the people, and to lead. In order to do each of those things, some other things must be sacrificed.”

Dimitri grimaced, his heart tightening in his chest. “Are you telling me to give up on Duscur?”

“Son, you must decide what it is you fight for as king. What causes do you take upon your shoulders? What weight do you lift off your people?”

The new king glanced back up at the old. Dimitri knew what he wanted, and he knew that restoring relations between Duscur and Faerghus would ultimately benefit both parties. But how could he convince the people who held so strongly the resentment of innocent people?

What did he have to sacrifice to make it happen?

“You look weary.”

Dimitri’s lips curled for a moment, and he shook his head almost unnoticeably back and forth. “You know I don’t sleep. Even now.”

“You’re sensitive.”

“Too sensitive for a king, I’ve heard.”

His father laughed again. That resounding, reverberating laugh of his that was unmistakably Lambert. A memory of his father laughing came in and out of his thoughts like a ghost, leaving behind a trace of wonder: was that truly what his father sounded like?

“I worry about you,” his father continued, all laughter gone from his voice, “but I am unable to check upon you as a father ought to. I  _ am  _ sorry for that. And I am sorry that I left you alone. Unfortunately, it is the burden a king must bear.”

Dimitri touched his chest, gathering the fabric of his silken shirt in his fist. His heart ached. He thought coming here would help, but the pain only grew.

He  _ was  _ alone. Alone together with strangers who viewed him as out-of-reach. Forbidden. He missed his friends from the Academy who treated him as an equal. No matter how dark a time that was for him, he knew one thing with certainty: those who surrounded him did so because they believed in him.

And now, no one stood beside him. Not even his father, who was just a man in a painting and a fading memory.

Dimitri turned his back on his father’s portrait. His steps echoed in the empty room, the sound ending a second after he stopped in front of the golden chair.

The king sat down into his throne and sighed. But no one was there to hear him.

* * *

A knock on the door startled the young king out of his own world. Dimitri returned to the forgotten throne room daily, hoping to hear his father’s voice again. But more often than not, he stood alone in the room staring at the portrait of a man long since gone with only his thoughts to accompany him.

The person at the door did not wait for confirmation from Dimitri before entering. “Your Majesty?”

Dimitri turned his attention from the portrait to Dedue for only a moment. “What do you see, Dedue?” he asked, looking back at his father’s face.

Dedue’s footsteps grew closer, and soon the image of the man of Duscur entered Dimitri’s periphery. Still, the king kept his focus on the painting, searching the face of a man who could never provide the answer.

“Your Majesty?” Dedue repeated instead of responding to the question.

“I see a king. The king I should be.” Dimitri reached up to his head and removed the crown he hated wearing, holding it tentatively in his hands: the same bejeweled crown Lambert wore in the painting.

“Your Majesty.”

Dimitri finally turned and looked at Dedue, anger forming creases between his brows. “What?”

“It is time for supper.”

Dimitri’s fingers curled around the crown, and he thought about throwing it. Instead, he put it back on his head. “I’m not hungry.”

“It is time for supper,” Dedue repeated.

The king narrowed his eye at his vassal and pursed his lips. Dedue could be obstinate in many ways, so it was no use fighting the man on such matters. He nodded, gesturing for Dedue to lead the way.

He wondered if the man of Duscur thought he failed. Why else would he refuse to answer? To avoid it so obviously? Meetings about Duscur reached dead ends at every turn, with proposed reparations insults at best, but Dimitri continued to push. It was all he could do, after all.

Dimitri almost managed the courage to ask Dedue when they made it to the dining hall. Dedue knocked once before a servant opened the door from within. The young woman bowed and opened the door wide with a smile.

“Dimitri!”

The sound of his name nearly stopped his heart. He swallowed to restart it, and the servant stepped out of the way so he could see into the room.

His was not the only setting today. In fact, nine sets of gold-rimmed plates and cutlery had been placed around the table. Seven of the nine chairs were occupied, and each person turned and looked as Dimitri stepped into the room. He wondered if they could hear his heart beating.

Dedue passed him, sitting in one of the remaining two chairs and placing his cloth napkin on his lap. The others turned to watch the king, each person grinning as Dimitri’s eyes traveled from one to the next.

“The food will get cold if we don’t eat,” Ingrid said from the seat beside the last empty one, “and it all looks too delicious to allow it to go to waste.”

“Dimitri, hurry up and sit down before Ingrid starts drooling all over the table,” Felix snapped, shooting the blonde knight a dark look.

“Mercie and I brought some sweet treats for after the meal, though, so don’t eat too much!” Annette announced, reaching below her chair and revealing a wicker basket covered in a blue cloth.

Dimitri stared at the group seated around his table and swallowed again, this time to suppress something else. Only when the professor stood up and held out a hand across the table as an invitation to join them could Dimitri get his legs to move.

He walked to the opposite side of the table and sat, flanked on either side by Dedue and the professor. Across from him, Sylvain laughed at something Mercedes said, while Annette passed Ashe the bowl of potatoes from in front of her. Ingrid glared at Felix, who could not prevent himself from smiling as he made fun of her.

“Dimitri?”

He looked up at the professor who spoke his name. “Why are you all here?”

“Can’t we have dinner with you once in a while? It’s been too long since we all got together!” Annette chimed in. “I know we’re all busy with our own things, but we agreed we can all spare some time to see our friends.”

_ Friends _ .

The professor grabbed one of the platters of meat and placed a couple of slabs on Dimitri’s plate. Dedue, on his other side, poured wine into his goblet. Dimitri watched as the others passed platters and bowls around the table, and food continued to pile on his plate as the professor and Dedue loaded more and more onto it.

“How did you arrange this?” Dimitri asked the professor, who smiled and looked past him to Dedue. Dimitri turned, crossing his arms as Dedue placed a roll on his own plate. “You did this?”

“I apologize if I overstepped,” Dedue said, focusing his attention on the roll.

“No, you did not.” Dimitri looked down at his own overfilled plate and pushed the potatoes around with his fork. “You did not overstep at all.”

Dimitri recalled briefly a conversation he once had with the professor.

_ I never knew it could be so… comforting to have someone standing by my side. _

Ah. So that was the feeling burgeoning in his chest. For the first time in weeks, Dimitri let himself relax in his chair. And when he took a bite of one of the many options on his plate, he swore he tasted the spices.

He reached back up to the crown on his head, and the attention of his friends turned his way. He removed it once more and set it beside his plate, and their eyes lingered on it before flickering back to his face.

“A crown is a heavy burden,” the professor said.

“Indeed it is,” Dimitri agreed.

“But the good thing is,” the professor continued, “that you’re never really alone.”

Dimitri started at these words. His fork fell to the table with a clatter. The servants who left him to his own devices so far came hurrying over, but he waved them off. He pushed the fork to the side and looked at the professor, who watched him with a mysterious grin.

“Yeah. Whenever you need help, you can reach out to us,” Ashe agreed, bringing Dimitri’s attention away from the professor.

Sylvain nodded, tapping a hand on the table as if he just remembered something. “Right, that reminds me. I heard those old-fashioned advisors of yours are giving you a hard time about Duscur. Felix and I would be happy to come and speak to them,” Sylvain offered. “The Gautier and Fraldarius Houses are not to be trifled with after all our families did for them during  _ and  _ after the war.”

Dimitri’s gaze softened further. “Sylvain…”

A hand fell upon his own. “See?” the professor said. His friends all nodded in agreement.

Ah. So, the worries he felt while thinking of his father meant only to trick him. The ghosts of his past that he could not escape haunted him in other ways now, it seemed. Any doubts Dimitri felt about being king, any loneliness he suffered, could be remedied after all. It proved no more than his own insecurities coming to the forefront.

“I apologize. I had forgotten,” he confessed.

“Dimitri.”

Dedue’s voice startled him again. It was a rare occasion, one that had not been enjoyed since before the end of the war. Dedue did not meet his gaze but instead folded his hands together.

“You appear pleased. It is nice to see.”

Pleased. It did not begin to cover the range of emotions Dimitri felt, but he nodded, his lips curving into a smile.

The conversation began again, a cacophony of voices each talking over each other as they caught up with each other. Dimitri laughed at the professor’s joke while Felix rolled his eyes at Sylvain’s dissipated updates and Annette passed her baked goods under the table to Ashe. Dimitri surveyed the group once more, watching the faces of his friends light up as they exchanged stories.

As usual, the professor was right: a crown  _ was _ a heavy burden.

One made lighter, Dimitri found, with many hands reaching out to him.

**Author's Note:**

> This was my submission for the Dimitri zine, A King's Journey. I am so honored to have been part of the zine and to contribute alongside such talented artists, writers, and mods. This is probably one of the highest quality zines I have ever seen, and if you have not purchased it, be sure to check out the leftover sale or snag a PDF copy. The page art for this story is too good to miss, as well.


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